1. Technical Field
The present disclosure relates to robotic roller hemming and seaming, and more specifically, to steerable roller hemming heads for robotic roller hemming.
2. Background Information
A roller hemming process can be used to join two metal sheets together to form a work piece. For example, two metal sheets can be joined to form a door panel or the like for an automobile. During a typical roller hemming process, a peripheral edge of an outer sheet of the two metal sheets is vertically bent along the entire circumference thereof and then the outer sheet is fixed to a mold. Then, an inner sheet is stacked on the outer sheet. With the two sheets stacked on top of one another, the two sheets are joined by pressing a roller head against the peripheral edge of the outer sheet to fold or hem the two sheets together. The roller head can be attached to an arm of a robot that moves the roller head about the work piece to hem the sheets together. The processing quality or the shape of a bent work piece depends on the positional accuracy of the robot manipulator, since the roller is moved by the robot.
While the arm of the robot is moving the roller head about the work piece within an operating envelope, other robots or automated tooling may be interacting or performing processes on the work piece (e.g., roller hemming, roller flanging, pre-hemming, pre-corner hemming, welding, drilling, milling, riveting, applying fasteners, etc.). The size of the operating envelope restricts access to the work piece to avoid interference between the robots and automated tooling.
There is a continuing need for improved roller heads that increase the quality and/or speed of the roller hemming process. In addition, there is a continuing need for improved roller heads that reduce the size of the operating envelope to allow additional robots to access a work piece during the roller hemming process.